I have not kept to my writing schedule. I missed my first deadline -- that of finishing up draft III -- by one day. Since then, I haven't accomplished any more goals, aside from the milestone that was printing the entire thing out (using an entire ink cartridge) so I could edit it without my computer. (My laptop is stationary, so I can't type anywhere but at my desk.) I also bought myself a very nice red pen.
I am disappointed at not making more progress, but I've realized that doing quality work is more important to me than passing deadlines. Perhaps this is a direct result of skipping NaNoWriMo this last year. But I think it's good in that the novel itself has become more important to me than finishing. I just happen to be in a place where meeting other deadlines has to take precedence, or schoolwork, theater, and other projects won't happen. And so, to do well, I have to wait.
Still, the important thing is moving forward. I do need to pick up my pen and start drenching my pages in blood, erm, ink. I need to push at it. Right now, I have no idea when I'm going to finish. And I want to finish. I want to have accomplished something, I want to be happy with the biggest writing project I've ever taken on. And I want, if possible, to have it published.
It has a long way to go. I can't rush it if it's going to have a chance at succeeding. But I do need to work on it.
For now, theater and homework have quieted down. Time to dive back in.
Showing posts with label deadlines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deadlines. Show all posts
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Scared to Miss
Being home for Christmas and January has not, so far, been very productive. Though holiday busyness has wound down, it doesn't look like I can plan for every day to be a writing day. Now, I get to decide whether to bemoan the fact that I don't have time perfect for writing, or I can write anyway.
I've given the first ten chapters of Void to a few people for feedback. One early responder has informed me that it does not, in fact, suck. This is encouragement enough to face my month-and-half distant deadline with defiance. Fourteen more chapters, ha! You don't scare me, February 15th.
But it does. Not just the still-present possibility that I could fail my deadline, but giving everything else up to it. It is important to take care of the house for my parents because they're at work all day and I am not. It is important to work out with my sister because I don't spend much time with her. Sometimes, it is needful to take a break and catch up on a book or favorite blog to recharge ideas.
Noveling isn't my only project. I want to rescue other parts of my life that have fallen by the wayside. Writing letters used to be important to me; I'm working to make it so again. Blogging is both a creative outlet and a discipline; thus, I've resolved to post every Sunday. Being away from school has resulted in squeezing Bible reading into the cracks because it doesn't "feel routine" anymore, but lack of routine is a terrible excuse when I've been relieved of school responsibilities for a month. If I don't take time to be with God, it's certainly not the universe's fault.
What will happen if I do not submit Void to Tor by February 15th? Nothing. I will still have most of a finished story. I'll still have friends and family who care about me and support me in their own ways. Maybe I'll finish by the 17th, or the 1st of March. Maybe it will be a better story if I wait and revise that long. But my goal is still possible. And I have to remember that the last-minute deadline rush is something I'm very good at.
Am I scared? Yes. Scared to miss my deadline and a bunch of other things. It's not some monstrous fear I must remove from my path. It's a smaller fear, one that's not so much an obstacle as a companion. It might even help me to grow.
I've given the first ten chapters of Void to a few people for feedback. One early responder has informed me that it does not, in fact, suck. This is encouragement enough to face my month-and-half distant deadline with defiance. Fourteen more chapters, ha! You don't scare me, February 15th.
But it does. Not just the still-present possibility that I could fail my deadline, but giving everything else up to it. It is important to take care of the house for my parents because they're at work all day and I am not. It is important to work out with my sister because I don't spend much time with her. Sometimes, it is needful to take a break and catch up on a book or favorite blog to recharge ideas.
Noveling isn't my only project. I want to rescue other parts of my life that have fallen by the wayside. Writing letters used to be important to me; I'm working to make it so again. Blogging is both a creative outlet and a discipline; thus, I've resolved to post every Sunday. Being away from school has resulted in squeezing Bible reading into the cracks because it doesn't "feel routine" anymore, but lack of routine is a terrible excuse when I've been relieved of school responsibilities for a month. If I don't take time to be with God, it's certainly not the universe's fault.
What will happen if I do not submit Void to Tor by February 15th? Nothing. I will still have most of a finished story. I'll still have friends and family who care about me and support me in their own ways. Maybe I'll finish by the 17th, or the 1st of March. Maybe it will be a better story if I wait and revise that long. But my goal is still possible. And I have to remember that the last-minute deadline rush is something I'm very good at.
Am I scared? Yes. Scared to miss my deadline and a bunch of other things. It's not some monstrous fear I must remove from my path. It's a smaller fear, one that's not so much an obstacle as a companion. It might even help me to grow.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Deadlines are Magic
A month and a half after I finished writing it, I've finally completed a readthrough of my current manuscript for Void. At first, I wanted to take a break and step back from it, which is good for writing. It gives you perspective so you can come back to the story with sharper eyes. Still... I should have finished this a while ago. I have self-imposed deadlines, after all.
Deadlines... about those. The big, scary, far-off one is February 15th, my 20th birthday. That is the day I will send a completed manuscript to a publisher. (I'm hoping Tor, but I need to do some research first.) However, to get to that point, I'll need to set myself some smaller, but still challenging ones. Good thing deadlines are magic.
I think I can give myself until the beginning of December to work over what I have and get my story ready for alpha readers. At the very latest, I could let it slip till Christmas break. This is when I'll beg writing and story-savvy friends to tear apart all my words and tell me what's wrong with them, and pray they won't tear out my heart in the process. I may actually have to limit myself on the number of people I have read it, though, just to make sure the input is focused and I can handle all of it. If you're reading this and are interested, please let me know.
In the meantime, I will be rewriting. Considering the quality of the draft I just read, the time frame I have to work with is mildly terrifying. This is what you get for procrastinating, I suppose. And considering that this is my first time taking a novel to this level in the editing process (my first time finishing a novel-length second draft), there might be better ways to go about it. Like, doing better research before starting. Right now, I have to come up with a semi-plausible-sounding way to modify a dying nuclear generator so as to set off an EMP, as well as consider its ramifications. I have to make the mechanics of character development, dramatic reveals, and the operations of a secret underground society go smoothly and believably. And I have to fix big glaring mistakes (oh, yeah, I forgot that character existed...) and find all the tiny, sneaky ones.
I will be spending the month of January at home, possibly working, but it will also be my time to work on the issues my early readers find and polish all the words. NaNoWriMo has proved to me that I can spend an entire month focused on a story; this January, I'll see if I can finish one instead of start it.
Then I'll have two weeks in February to make sure I'm happy with everything before this challenge I gave myself over half a year ago is over. (Yeah, over half a year. Again, procrastination.)
Am I scared? Yes. Can I do it? I'm certain. Tight deadlines can be awful, but they're also the reason I've managed to write first drafts for three different 50,000-word novels in the first place while having rehearsal every night (November tends to be a heavy month for theater), as well as a 60,000-word second draft. These next four months might be terrible (especially if I decide to be insane and do NaNoWriMo again), but I can do it.
Why? Because I love this story. It's the reason I wrote it in the first place.
Heaven help me. Bye for now -- I've got work to do.
Deadlines... about those. The big, scary, far-off one is February 15th, my 20th birthday. That is the day I will send a completed manuscript to a publisher. (I'm hoping Tor, but I need to do some research first.) However, to get to that point, I'll need to set myself some smaller, but still challenging ones. Good thing deadlines are magic.
I think I can give myself until the beginning of December to work over what I have and get my story ready for alpha readers. At the very latest, I could let it slip till Christmas break. This is when I'll beg writing and story-savvy friends to tear apart all my words and tell me what's wrong with them, and pray they won't tear out my heart in the process. I may actually have to limit myself on the number of people I have read it, though, just to make sure the input is focused and I can handle all of it. If you're reading this and are interested, please let me know.
In the meantime, I will be rewriting. Considering the quality of the draft I just read, the time frame I have to work with is mildly terrifying. This is what you get for procrastinating, I suppose. And considering that this is my first time taking a novel to this level in the editing process (my first time finishing a novel-length second draft), there might be better ways to go about it. Like, doing better research before starting. Right now, I have to come up with a semi-plausible-sounding way to modify a dying nuclear generator so as to set off an EMP, as well as consider its ramifications. I have to make the mechanics of character development, dramatic reveals, and the operations of a secret underground society go smoothly and believably. And I have to fix big glaring mistakes (oh, yeah, I forgot that character existed...) and find all the tiny, sneaky ones.
I will be spending the month of January at home, possibly working, but it will also be my time to work on the issues my early readers find and polish all the words. NaNoWriMo has proved to me that I can spend an entire month focused on a story; this January, I'll see if I can finish one instead of start it.
Then I'll have two weeks in February to make sure I'm happy with everything before this challenge I gave myself over half a year ago is over. (Yeah, over half a year. Again, procrastination.)
Am I scared? Yes. Can I do it? I'm certain. Tight deadlines can be awful, but they're also the reason I've managed to write first drafts for three different 50,000-word novels in the first place while having rehearsal every night (November tends to be a heavy month for theater), as well as a 60,000-word second draft. These next four months might be terrible (especially if I decide to be insane and do NaNoWriMo again), but I can do it.
Why? Because I love this story. It's the reason I wrote it in the first place.
Heaven help me. Bye for now -- I've got work to do.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Writing as Work
I consider myself to be a very hard worker. If I've committed to do something, I will do it, and I will go above and beyond the generally accepted minimum. This is how I get things done at school. I'm working on someone else's time, doing things they expect me to get done. How can I possibly fail them?
But things are a little different if I'm working on my own time. I finished NaNoWriMo, but it wasn't a walk in the park. It was something I wanted to do, but it's easy to put wants aside for needs. Sometimes once all the needs are finished, it's hard to balance the wants.
For me, this is what makes writing hard. I have no limit to willpower if I need to get something done. But when working on my story, there is no one else telling me to finish it -- just me. And at this stage of revision, I'm unsure enough that I don't know when to give myself deadlines, let alone how to make myself meet them.
Another difficult thing is that writing takes time. Sometimes, you need to give it a rest instead of working a piece to death. Sometimes you need to get away from it so you can come back to the story with a fresh mind. And if you leave the story for a few days, it's easy to let those days be a week. Or weeks. Or more.
For fear of this happening again, as it did to my previous NaNovels, I'm proceeding blindly into the revision process. I'm great at revising papers. I can revise short stories. I can analyze someone else's story and clearly point out the good and bad points. Right now I can't do that with my writing, because basically my story's not written yet.
Sure, I have a NaNoWriMo draft. But in the past few years, NaNoWriMo has been a way for me to spew the ideas in my head onto a document. I find basic ways to make them fit together. I touch up a character portrait. And I finish -- something. But not the thing it has potential to be. Taking a rough draft and making it into something great is not yet my area of expertise, but if I'm going to be a real writer, I have to make that weakness one of my strengths. To do this, I think it's time to turn to a tool I've previously hated an feared: the outline. Perhaps if I had one of those going in, I wouldn't have so many problems now.
I love the ideas in my story. I've got a government that's outlawed all technology, a secret underground organization, an immortal beast who was once human, and a nine-year-old-boy trying to find out the truth about his family. The big pieces fit together, but as I'm refining it, I'm having trouble making my character's motivations align with the action I need.
I'm home in Iowa for the rest of January. My parents and siblings are at work and school, so for the majority of the day I'm by myself. I'm going to make this into writing time. I can't let what I have go to waste. For the next day or two, I'm going to be brainstorming and taking notes on how to put together my broken pieces. Then it's time to tame the beast. The deadline I have for my finished outline is January 11th. I have no idea if this is reasonable or not, but it's definitely more reasonable than me spending the entire month of January sleeping in and playing Wii.
Resolving is making me feel better, though it hasn't changed the fact that I don't necessarily know what I'm doing. Feel free to offer advice. It looks like I'm going to need it.
But things are a little different if I'm working on my own time. I finished NaNoWriMo, but it wasn't a walk in the park. It was something I wanted to do, but it's easy to put wants aside for needs. Sometimes once all the needs are finished, it's hard to balance the wants.
For me, this is what makes writing hard. I have no limit to willpower if I need to get something done. But when working on my story, there is no one else telling me to finish it -- just me. And at this stage of revision, I'm unsure enough that I don't know when to give myself deadlines, let alone how to make myself meet them.
Another difficult thing is that writing takes time. Sometimes, you need to give it a rest instead of working a piece to death. Sometimes you need to get away from it so you can come back to the story with a fresh mind. And if you leave the story for a few days, it's easy to let those days be a week. Or weeks. Or more.
For fear of this happening again, as it did to my previous NaNovels, I'm proceeding blindly into the revision process. I'm great at revising papers. I can revise short stories. I can analyze someone else's story and clearly point out the good and bad points. Right now I can't do that with my writing, because basically my story's not written yet.
Sure, I have a NaNoWriMo draft. But in the past few years, NaNoWriMo has been a way for me to spew the ideas in my head onto a document. I find basic ways to make them fit together. I touch up a character portrait. And I finish -- something. But not the thing it has potential to be. Taking a rough draft and making it into something great is not yet my area of expertise, but if I'm going to be a real writer, I have to make that weakness one of my strengths. To do this, I think it's time to turn to a tool I've previously hated an feared: the outline. Perhaps if I had one of those going in, I wouldn't have so many problems now.
I love the ideas in my story. I've got a government that's outlawed all technology, a secret underground organization, an immortal beast who was once human, and a nine-year-old-boy trying to find out the truth about his family. The big pieces fit together, but as I'm refining it, I'm having trouble making my character's motivations align with the action I need.
I'm home in Iowa for the rest of January. My parents and siblings are at work and school, so for the majority of the day I'm by myself. I'm going to make this into writing time. I can't let what I have go to waste. For the next day or two, I'm going to be brainstorming and taking notes on how to put together my broken pieces. Then it's time to tame the beast. The deadline I have for my finished outline is January 11th. I have no idea if this is reasonable or not, but it's definitely more reasonable than me spending the entire month of January sleeping in and playing Wii.
Resolving is making me feel better, though it hasn't changed the fact that I don't necessarily know what I'm doing. Feel free to offer advice. It looks like I'm going to need it.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Music and Goals
This is our last weekend for performances of A Christmas Carol. Our last show is tomorrow afternoon, and I'm sure I'll be both happy and sad it's over. I'll miss the community of it, but now I might have time for community in some other things.
NaNoWriMo is also over, which takes one big chunk of work out of my life. Finals are two weeks away, but right now, I've got some room to think about things and plan.
I've realized lately what goals can do in a person's life. Deadlines have become significant to me through NaNoWriMo and the warnings of my writing professor ("'Deadline' is a literal, not a figurative, term. It means 'pass this line, and you're dead.'"), but goals are a way of putting deadlines with some positive connotations in your life. It means something you've wanted to accomplish is finished. It means you've improved yourself or your skills.
To that effect, there's something I've been working on lately. I love music. I have a decent voice and I play flute, but I've always wanted to play piano. I started practicing by myself in high school, but I think I've improved a lot with the free access to practice rooms here. It may not be Billy Joel's Dublinesque, (which I will be able to play before I die!) but this is a song I've been practicing for some time. It's A Day Without Rain, by Enya, not without some mistakes. I also need to get out of the habit of looking at my hands, but I'm happy with what I've accomplished.
So, with setting music goals in mind, I've got another idea. I own an ocarina which I don't play very often. (Yes, they exist outside the realm of Hyrule.) In light of the Christmas season, I plan to learn a new Christmas carol every week and post it here to the blog. I still need to pick what songs I'm going to do, but I'm excited to have a new goal and to be working toward something.
NaNoWriMo is also over, which takes one big chunk of work out of my life. Finals are two weeks away, but right now, I've got some room to think about things and plan.
I've realized lately what goals can do in a person's life. Deadlines have become significant to me through NaNoWriMo and the warnings of my writing professor ("'Deadline' is a literal, not a figurative, term. It means 'pass this line, and you're dead.'"), but goals are a way of putting deadlines with some positive connotations in your life. It means something you've wanted to accomplish is finished. It means you've improved yourself or your skills.
To that effect, there's something I've been working on lately. I love music. I have a decent voice and I play flute, but I've always wanted to play piano. I started practicing by myself in high school, but I think I've improved a lot with the free access to practice rooms here. It may not be Billy Joel's Dublinesque, (which I will be able to play before I die!) but this is a song I've been practicing for some time. It's A Day Without Rain, by Enya, not without some mistakes. I also need to get out of the habit of looking at my hands, but I'm happy with what I've accomplished.
So, with setting music goals in mind, I've got another idea. I own an ocarina which I don't play very often. (Yes, they exist outside the realm of Hyrule.) In light of the Christmas season, I plan to learn a new Christmas carol every week and post it here to the blog. I still need to pick what songs I'm going to do, but I'm excited to have a new goal and to be working toward something.
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